Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Spain
Spain was our last port, and just like every other port, it was really cool. In Spain, I met up with the legendary Luca, who I know from my first two years of school and he just bums around Spain now, and we went to Sevilla and Granada, both of which were real cool. I was really excited for Spain, especially because we were going to Andalucia which is where my ancestors are from on my dad’s side of the family.
The boat docked inn Cadiz, and luckily the boat was cleared by immigration in less than an hour. Good job by Spanish immigration not holding us up for half a day like they did in Japan and Thailand. Anyway, we had a big group for Spain, a group bigger than what we normally like with 7 people (8 in Sevilla), but its all good because everything worked out. Anyway, we walked to the train station in Cadiz, which was real close to the boat, and we booked our train to Sevilla. 30 minutes later, we got on our train and we were on the way to Sevilla, which is where we were going to meet up Luca.
I planned our meet up time with Luca to be at 3 at the Sevilla train station to be safe, but we got there at 1:30, so we ate at the train station because it looked like there were no restaurants nearby. The restaurant we ate at was so bad, it looked good from the outside but we went in and it was gross, one of the worst restaurants I ever went to. The restaurant was right next to our meeting spot, and halfway through lunch, Teej of all people (who has never met Luca obviously, only me and Eric know him because we went to school with him) spotted him and got him. It was sick finally seeing Luca, and to my surprise, he wasn’t all grimey like I expected. He looked just like he does in Arizona, and after lunch, we went to the area by the Cathedral to get a Hostel. Luca had already been in Sevilla for a day, so he knew where lots of things were already, so he showed us the way to the Cathedral and from there, we were able to get a Hostel pretty easily (there are so many right near the Cathedral). After that, most of the people in our group wanted to go to a horse show, but me, Luca, and Eric didn’t want to do that so we just started to walk around the city. We checked out the Plaza in the city, and it was dark out by this point but the Plaza was really nice. All of Sevilla looked pretty nice, it doesn’t have tons of landmarks (although the ones it has are pretty cool, especially the Cathedral) but its an awesome city, I really liked it there. Anyway, after the Plaza, we walked up to some river, but I forgot what it was called, and then Luca left us because he was staying the albergue. He said he stays at albergues because they are free, and he described them as places that are government sponsored that are for people looking for jobs and stuff like that. Anyway, to stay there, he had to be there by 9 so he had to leave, so me and Eric went back near the Cathedral and went to this awesome bar called the Texas Lone Star Saloon. We saw it earlier in the day, and we knew we wanted to check it out because they had a sign saying they were showing live college football that night. We both went and saw Nebraska play Colorado. There were like 10 SAS kids there or so, all Colorado kids (since Colorado is one of the most represented schools on SAS) so we watched that for a little bit, then went to dinner. We went to this awesome Tapas place right near the Hostel, definitely the best restaurant we went to in Spain, it was so good we went there again the next night (Spanish restaurants, by the way, were very hit or miss, we had some great food but some terrible food, some places looked good and ended up being very mediocre, I thought I ate better food in most of the other countries). After that, we met up with the other people we were traveling with, but they didn’t want to go out to the bar, so we went back to the Texan bar to check out the Texas/Texas A&M game. It was awesome to see that rivalry game, especially since I’ve been so football deprived this semester, and there were lots of American study abroad kids (but not SAS kids) watching the game so that was cool. At the bar, we had what seemed to be the most popular beer in Sevilla, which is Cruzcampo, and it’s a really bad beer. Guess there is a good reason why I’ve never heard anything about Spanish beer before, its not very good (and as people know, Spain is much more known for its wine than its beer). Anyway, at the bar we met this really drunk German guy named Martin. He seemed like a cool guy at first, but then as we were leaving after we saw Texas A&M beat Texas, he kept on insisting that we go to the next bar with him. We didn’t want to go, but after talking to him for 15 minutes, he finally realized that he didn’t wanna go to the bar so he left. I think he might have made some pro-Nazi remark at some point too, and that’s pretty sketchy, but maybe I just misheard him.
The second day, we woke up and we met up with Luca to se stuff that day. We started out by going to the stadium of the soccer club FC Sevilla to get tickets to their match that night. We were debating between getting the 35 euro tickets in the upper tiers behind the goal, or the 45 euro tickets on the lower levels on the side, and we decided it was worth it to spend a little extra for the better seats so we all got the 45 euro tickets (which worked out really well.) However, Luca refused to get a ticket because he refuses to see any soccer match live until he sees his hometown club, Calcio Lecco, live first (he’s the most soccer obsessed person I know, but he’s never actually been to a match.) Also, one thing that was depressing getting tickets is that tickets were still available for the Sevilla champions league match against Arsenal that Tuesday, which I would have loved to have gone to (and Sevilla beat Arsenal) but that’s the day our boat left, too bad it didn’t leave a day later. Anyway, after that, we all went inside the Cathedral to check that out. The Cathedral is really impressive from the outside, it’s the most important building in Sevilla (all 3 cities I went to seemed to have a big, major cathedral in the city center….guess that’s a characteristic of a Spanish city), but its even better on the inside. It’s absolutely huge, its gothic style, and there is just tons of art and relics on the inside and the altars are just incredible. Even after traveling for 3 months (which makes things way less impressive after a while since I just kept seeing more and more incredible sites), I was still really impressed by the Cathedral, it was great. After checking out the inside of the Cathedral, we climbed up to the top which wasn’t that bad, I thought it would be way worse but the climb up isn’t steps, its just a lot of ramps at slight inclines and that makes going up way easier. From the top, we saw a great view of the city and we reunited with Eric, Swain, Jun, Lily, and Lissette who we got split up from because we had to take 2 cabs from the stadium to the Cathedral. By the way, I’ve never talked about Jun, but he’s this awesome guy we met on the boat and he’s straight out of China, as in, he had never even been outside of his homeland until he went to San Diego to do SAS. However, he’s one of the coolest and best guys I know and he’s funny as hell. Anyway, after the Cathedral we ate lunch and then walked around. After walking around and checking out more of Sevilla for a few hours, we went back to the hostel to meet up to go to the soccer match. We got to the Estadio Sanchez Pizjuan, home of FC Sevilla, and there was a huge crowd of people drinking outside the stadium. Literally, the whole area around the stadium was just people drinking, which was really cool. We got to the stadium around 40 minutes before the match, so we definitely had a few beers outside the stadium before the match (which was good because it kept us warm, although the weather in Sevilla wasn’t bad, it was in the 50s and 60s the whole time.) We went into the stadium and when we got in, we looked at our tickets and we were all second row, how awesome is that? We went to our seats, then we saw some empty seats right in front so we were front row, right on the edge of the beginning of the penalty box, the seats were definitely real good (especially since it was 90% full and it’s a really nice, 50,000 seat stadium, no idea how we got such good seats getting tickets the day of the match.) Anyway, the atmosphere was kind of a disappointment. It was still pretty good, but I thought it would be rowdier. In Turkey at the Besiktas match, all the fans were rowdy, but at the Sevilla match, there is only one section that was rowdy and the rest wasn’t that loud, except for when there were goals, so that was lame. We wanted tickets in what we heard was the rowdiest part (which ended up being the only rowdy part) but it was sold out when we tried to get seats, and you cant sneak in there because they cage off the different sections from each other, but it was okay because our seats still had a sweet view. However, the match didn’t go well for Sevilla, and they lost 3-1 to Mallorca.
The next day, I woke up early to meet up with Luca. However, no one else woke up, and we had an 11:50 train to catch to Granada (we all wished there was an earlier one, but the only one earlier was at 6 AM and we knew none of us would get up for that), and since me and Luca had time we checked out the Alcazar which is a Moorish castle right next to the Cathedral. It was free for students which was awesome, and the Alcazar itself was cool but not amazing. It was still worth seeing though, and looking back on it, it was similar to the Alhambra except worse and much less impressive, but I’m still happy I saw it. After that, me and Luca went to the hostel and met up with everyone to go to the train station to go to Granada, we all went except Swain who went to Madrid to visit his cousin. It was a 3 hour train ride, and we saw some cool Andalucian countryside on the way. We got to Granada where we bumped into some SAS kids (which is the norm, it happens everywhere when you go on SAS) and they told us that there were a bunch of hostels near the Cathedral (typical, since Spanish cities are built around them as I said earlier) so we went to the Cathedral, walked around, and found some hostel so we checked in there. From there, we went to the Granada Cathedral and that was awesome too. It was huge (although not as big as the Sevilla Cathedral) and it was white on the inside (not gothic like the Sevilla Cathedral) and it was pretty cool and impressive, I liked it a lot. After that, we went to a restaurant, had some tapas and some sangria, then we went back to the hostel, chilled for a little bit, and then went to the bar. We went to this Irish pub and the bars weren’t happening at all since it was a Sunday night, but it was still cool to chill in there. Furthermore, the Irish pub had the Bears/Broncos game, so of course I was very happy to watch some football. It was also a Sky Sports telecast (which is a UK channel) so it was interesting to see a European telecast of an American football game (the college football games I saw in Sevilla were American telecasts, they had the ESPN logo all over them.)
The next day, we woke up early and walked over to the Alhambra, which is the main attraction in Granada, the main reason why we went to Granada, and one of the most famous sites in all of Spain (it was the Spanish nomination for the new 7 wonders contest, although it didn’t win.) Granada, by the way, is a really cool city, its small but it still has a city feel (which is something I really like about European cities in general, when they have 250,000 people like Granada they still feel like cities, a 250,000 person city in America is a boring suburb.) I thought it had a slightly different feel than Sevilla, but I really liked both. Anyway, getting to the Alhambra was a pretty intense walk since it was a really hilly way up, and then at the Alhambra you have to walk all the way to the back of it (in respect to the city center) to get tickets and enter which made it even more of a walk, but it was really cool. Luckily we were there in the offseason, because the Alhambra gets packed during the on season and they limit the amount of people in there at a time so if it was on season, we would have had to buy tickets a day in advance, but luckily since it was November we didn’t have to do that. Anyway, the Alhambra didn’t look too impressive to me from the outside, but the inside was incredible. The main palace on the inside was great from the inside, its hard to describe but everything just had a cool design and there are a bunch of reflecting cools which make it even cooler. I thought that after the outside, that the Alhambra would be a disappointment but it ended up being incredible and we ended up staying there for at least 3 hours just because it was so cool. Not only was the Alhambra awesome, but since its on a hill, the views of Granada from the Alhambra are great. Also, a lot of buildings in Granada are painted white so that makes the view from the Alhambra of the city great. Also, attached to the Alhambra is the Generalife, which is a really, really large garden, and that was also awesome. The Alhambra was just great, it was so big and the buildings were all just really cool on the inside, its an amazing complex and it was totally worth the trip to Granada to check it out. After the Alhambra, we just walked around and checked out the city. That night was our last night in Spain, so two of our other friends came in to Granada to hit up the bars with us and they were planning on checking out the Alhambra the following morning. That night, we ended up going to a bunch of bars and they were all cool although none of the ones we went to were packed, but then at 2 AM we decided to go to the big club in the city which was a bad idea. We went there, and the bouncers there decided to pick a fight with Lily and Lissette. They started to exchange words in Spanish, all for no reason, and eventually, one of them decided to start pushing Eric. Then, they started to get physical with Lily and Lissette and they even hit them and tried to slam Lissette‘s head, so obviously one of the cab drivers called the cops and 3 cop cars showed up in literally 1 minute, its amazing how they got there that fast. By the time they got there, the girls already got away from the bouncers, but they still filed a report. Lily and Lissette speak Spanish, so it was easy for them to communicate with the cops. Anyway, they said the bouncers are from Romania and they start problems at that club every night, but whats weird is that the bouncers are still there and don’t seem to ever get arrested. The cops didn’t arrest them, the girls filed a report but apparently nothing can be done to the bouncers for this incident because we were all leaving Granada the next day. The cops were really nice to us but they seem a bit lazy, and I thought it was ridiculous that the bouncers still have jobs and arent in jail since they are known for doing that, but yet they are still there. Either way, that was a pretty bad way to end the night, but everyone was okay and the girls didn’t have any cuts or anything so that was good.
The last day, we woke up and went to the bus station to get a bus since we heard it would be a faster way to get to Cadiz. We had to say bye to Luca which sucked but it was still good seeing him for a few days….he said that after we left, he would stay in Granada for a few days before continuing his travels around Spain. The bus wasn’t much faster, it was still a 5 hour bus trip (train would have been a little longer because we would have had to switch trains in Sevilla), but luckily I was tired so I just rested the whole time. We got Cadiz around 4 or so, where we quickly went back on the boat to drop off our stuff and then we left to check out Cadiz a little bit. I didn‘t really see much of Cadiz, but I saw the big Cathedral in Cadiz, which of course looked very impressive from the outside because it seems to be a characteristic of the Spanish city to have an impressive cathedral in the city center, but besides that, we just ate and chilled before getting back on the boat to go to the States.
Overall, I loved Spain and SAS in general. SAS was really great, I saw so many awesome places and had a great time doing it. I met some really cool people and I would definitely recommend SAS to anyone. Of course, it wasn’t perfect (the administration was terrible, the executive dean of the voyage was very belittling and a lot of the people that ran student life were rude, disrespectful, and unfriendly) and I think the program is a little too strict about certain things (like if you get caught going on the ship drunk in port, you are supposed to get 24 hours of dock time which I think is a ridiculous punishment, its way too strict and apparently they used to be much more lenient about this when the program was under Pitt, but this was only enforced the final day in port, no one I know ever got in trouble for going on the ship drunk on the other days in port), but I still think the program is great because it takes you to so many great countries and you get academic credit for it. It’s really hard to get any work done on the trip, but I was still able to manage to get it done while at sea and in the end, SAS was definitely worth it and if I had to do it all again, I definitely would. SAS is great, and even though it sounds like Pitt did a better job managing the program than UVA does (I talked to someone on the trip who did it before with Pitt, and he said the administration was much better when he did it with them and everyone loved them, now under UVA the whole entire boat hated the administration), I would still recommend the program under the current state. It’s awesome, and we had a really great itinerary which made the trip so good.
The boat docked inn Cadiz, and luckily the boat was cleared by immigration in less than an hour. Good job by Spanish immigration not holding us up for half a day like they did in Japan and Thailand. Anyway, we had a big group for Spain, a group bigger than what we normally like with 7 people (8 in Sevilla), but its all good because everything worked out. Anyway, we walked to the train station in Cadiz, which was real close to the boat, and we booked our train to Sevilla. 30 minutes later, we got on our train and we were on the way to Sevilla, which is where we were going to meet up Luca.
I planned our meet up time with Luca to be at 3 at the Sevilla train station to be safe, but we got there at 1:30, so we ate at the train station because it looked like there were no restaurants nearby. The restaurant we ate at was so bad, it looked good from the outside but we went in and it was gross, one of the worst restaurants I ever went to. The restaurant was right next to our meeting spot, and halfway through lunch, Teej of all people (who has never met Luca obviously, only me and Eric know him because we went to school with him) spotted him and got him. It was sick finally seeing Luca, and to my surprise, he wasn’t all grimey like I expected. He looked just like he does in Arizona, and after lunch, we went to the area by the Cathedral to get a Hostel. Luca had already been in Sevilla for a day, so he knew where lots of things were already, so he showed us the way to the Cathedral and from there, we were able to get a Hostel pretty easily (there are so many right near the Cathedral). After that, most of the people in our group wanted to go to a horse show, but me, Luca, and Eric didn’t want to do that so we just started to walk around the city. We checked out the Plaza in the city, and it was dark out by this point but the Plaza was really nice. All of Sevilla looked pretty nice, it doesn’t have tons of landmarks (although the ones it has are pretty cool, especially the Cathedral) but its an awesome city, I really liked it there. Anyway, after the Plaza, we walked up to some river, but I forgot what it was called, and then Luca left us because he was staying the albergue. He said he stays at albergues because they are free, and he described them as places that are government sponsored that are for people looking for jobs and stuff like that. Anyway, to stay there, he had to be there by 9 so he had to leave, so me and Eric went back near the Cathedral and went to this awesome bar called the Texas Lone Star Saloon. We saw it earlier in the day, and we knew we wanted to check it out because they had a sign saying they were showing live college football that night. We both went and saw Nebraska play Colorado. There were like 10 SAS kids there or so, all Colorado kids (since Colorado is one of the most represented schools on SAS) so we watched that for a little bit, then went to dinner. We went to this awesome Tapas place right near the Hostel, definitely the best restaurant we went to in Spain, it was so good we went there again the next night (Spanish restaurants, by the way, were very hit or miss, we had some great food but some terrible food, some places looked good and ended up being very mediocre, I thought I ate better food in most of the other countries). After that, we met up with the other people we were traveling with, but they didn’t want to go out to the bar, so we went back to the Texan bar to check out the Texas/Texas A&M game. It was awesome to see that rivalry game, especially since I’ve been so football deprived this semester, and there were lots of American study abroad kids (but not SAS kids) watching the game so that was cool. At the bar, we had what seemed to be the most popular beer in Sevilla, which is Cruzcampo, and it’s a really bad beer. Guess there is a good reason why I’ve never heard anything about Spanish beer before, its not very good (and as people know, Spain is much more known for its wine than its beer). Anyway, at the bar we met this really drunk German guy named Martin. He seemed like a cool guy at first, but then as we were leaving after we saw Texas A&M beat Texas, he kept on insisting that we go to the next bar with him. We didn’t want to go, but after talking to him for 15 minutes, he finally realized that he didn’t wanna go to the bar so he left. I think he might have made some pro-Nazi remark at some point too, and that’s pretty sketchy, but maybe I just misheard him.
The second day, we woke up and we met up with Luca to se stuff that day. We started out by going to the stadium of the soccer club FC Sevilla to get tickets to their match that night. We were debating between getting the 35 euro tickets in the upper tiers behind the goal, or the 45 euro tickets on the lower levels on the side, and we decided it was worth it to spend a little extra for the better seats so we all got the 45 euro tickets (which worked out really well.) However, Luca refused to get a ticket because he refuses to see any soccer match live until he sees his hometown club, Calcio Lecco, live first (he’s the most soccer obsessed person I know, but he’s never actually been to a match.) Also, one thing that was depressing getting tickets is that tickets were still available for the Sevilla champions league match against Arsenal that Tuesday, which I would have loved to have gone to (and Sevilla beat Arsenal) but that’s the day our boat left, too bad it didn’t leave a day later. Anyway, after that, we all went inside the Cathedral to check that out. The Cathedral is really impressive from the outside, it’s the most important building in Sevilla (all 3 cities I went to seemed to have a big, major cathedral in the city center….guess that’s a characteristic of a Spanish city), but its even better on the inside. It’s absolutely huge, its gothic style, and there is just tons of art and relics on the inside and the altars are just incredible. Even after traveling for 3 months (which makes things way less impressive after a while since I just kept seeing more and more incredible sites), I was still really impressed by the Cathedral, it was great. After checking out the inside of the Cathedral, we climbed up to the top which wasn’t that bad, I thought it would be way worse but the climb up isn’t steps, its just a lot of ramps at slight inclines and that makes going up way easier. From the top, we saw a great view of the city and we reunited with Eric, Swain, Jun, Lily, and Lissette who we got split up from because we had to take 2 cabs from the stadium to the Cathedral. By the way, I’ve never talked about Jun, but he’s this awesome guy we met on the boat and he’s straight out of China, as in, he had never even been outside of his homeland until he went to San Diego to do SAS. However, he’s one of the coolest and best guys I know and he’s funny as hell. Anyway, after the Cathedral we ate lunch and then walked around. After walking around and checking out more of Sevilla for a few hours, we went back to the hostel to meet up to go to the soccer match. We got to the Estadio Sanchez Pizjuan, home of FC Sevilla, and there was a huge crowd of people drinking outside the stadium. Literally, the whole area around the stadium was just people drinking, which was really cool. We got to the stadium around 40 minutes before the match, so we definitely had a few beers outside the stadium before the match (which was good because it kept us warm, although the weather in Sevilla wasn’t bad, it was in the 50s and 60s the whole time.) We went into the stadium and when we got in, we looked at our tickets and we were all second row, how awesome is that? We went to our seats, then we saw some empty seats right in front so we were front row, right on the edge of the beginning of the penalty box, the seats were definitely real good (especially since it was 90% full and it’s a really nice, 50,000 seat stadium, no idea how we got such good seats getting tickets the day of the match.) Anyway, the atmosphere was kind of a disappointment. It was still pretty good, but I thought it would be rowdier. In Turkey at the Besiktas match, all the fans were rowdy, but at the Sevilla match, there is only one section that was rowdy and the rest wasn’t that loud, except for when there were goals, so that was lame. We wanted tickets in what we heard was the rowdiest part (which ended up being the only rowdy part) but it was sold out when we tried to get seats, and you cant sneak in there because they cage off the different sections from each other, but it was okay because our seats still had a sweet view. However, the match didn’t go well for Sevilla, and they lost 3-1 to Mallorca.
The next day, I woke up early to meet up with Luca. However, no one else woke up, and we had an 11:50 train to catch to Granada (we all wished there was an earlier one, but the only one earlier was at 6 AM and we knew none of us would get up for that), and since me and Luca had time we checked out the Alcazar which is a Moorish castle right next to the Cathedral. It was free for students which was awesome, and the Alcazar itself was cool but not amazing. It was still worth seeing though, and looking back on it, it was similar to the Alhambra except worse and much less impressive, but I’m still happy I saw it. After that, me and Luca went to the hostel and met up with everyone to go to the train station to go to Granada, we all went except Swain who went to Madrid to visit his cousin. It was a 3 hour train ride, and we saw some cool Andalucian countryside on the way. We got to Granada where we bumped into some SAS kids (which is the norm, it happens everywhere when you go on SAS) and they told us that there were a bunch of hostels near the Cathedral (typical, since Spanish cities are built around them as I said earlier) so we went to the Cathedral, walked around, and found some hostel so we checked in there. From there, we went to the Granada Cathedral and that was awesome too. It was huge (although not as big as the Sevilla Cathedral) and it was white on the inside (not gothic like the Sevilla Cathedral) and it was pretty cool and impressive, I liked it a lot. After that, we went to a restaurant, had some tapas and some sangria, then we went back to the hostel, chilled for a little bit, and then went to the bar. We went to this Irish pub and the bars weren’t happening at all since it was a Sunday night, but it was still cool to chill in there. Furthermore, the Irish pub had the Bears/Broncos game, so of course I was very happy to watch some football. It was also a Sky Sports telecast (which is a UK channel) so it was interesting to see a European telecast of an American football game (the college football games I saw in Sevilla were American telecasts, they had the ESPN logo all over them.)
The next day, we woke up early and walked over to the Alhambra, which is the main attraction in Granada, the main reason why we went to Granada, and one of the most famous sites in all of Spain (it was the Spanish nomination for the new 7 wonders contest, although it didn’t win.) Granada, by the way, is a really cool city, its small but it still has a city feel (which is something I really like about European cities in general, when they have 250,000 people like Granada they still feel like cities, a 250,000 person city in America is a boring suburb.) I thought it had a slightly different feel than Sevilla, but I really liked both. Anyway, getting to the Alhambra was a pretty intense walk since it was a really hilly way up, and then at the Alhambra you have to walk all the way to the back of it (in respect to the city center) to get tickets and enter which made it even more of a walk, but it was really cool. Luckily we were there in the offseason, because the Alhambra gets packed during the on season and they limit the amount of people in there at a time so if it was on season, we would have had to buy tickets a day in advance, but luckily since it was November we didn’t have to do that. Anyway, the Alhambra didn’t look too impressive to me from the outside, but the inside was incredible. The main palace on the inside was great from the inside, its hard to describe but everything just had a cool design and there are a bunch of reflecting cools which make it even cooler. I thought that after the outside, that the Alhambra would be a disappointment but it ended up being incredible and we ended up staying there for at least 3 hours just because it was so cool. Not only was the Alhambra awesome, but since its on a hill, the views of Granada from the Alhambra are great. Also, a lot of buildings in Granada are painted white so that makes the view from the Alhambra of the city great. Also, attached to the Alhambra is the Generalife, which is a really, really large garden, and that was also awesome. The Alhambra was just great, it was so big and the buildings were all just really cool on the inside, its an amazing complex and it was totally worth the trip to Granada to check it out. After the Alhambra, we just walked around and checked out the city. That night was our last night in Spain, so two of our other friends came in to Granada to hit up the bars with us and they were planning on checking out the Alhambra the following morning. That night, we ended up going to a bunch of bars and they were all cool although none of the ones we went to were packed, but then at 2 AM we decided to go to the big club in the city which was a bad idea. We went there, and the bouncers there decided to pick a fight with Lily and Lissette. They started to exchange words in Spanish, all for no reason, and eventually, one of them decided to start pushing Eric. Then, they started to get physical with Lily and Lissette and they even hit them and tried to slam Lissette‘s head, so obviously one of the cab drivers called the cops and 3 cop cars showed up in literally 1 minute, its amazing how they got there that fast. By the time they got there, the girls already got away from the bouncers, but they still filed a report. Lily and Lissette speak Spanish, so it was easy for them to communicate with the cops. Anyway, they said the bouncers are from Romania and they start problems at that club every night, but whats weird is that the bouncers are still there and don’t seem to ever get arrested. The cops didn’t arrest them, the girls filed a report but apparently nothing can be done to the bouncers for this incident because we were all leaving Granada the next day. The cops were really nice to us but they seem a bit lazy, and I thought it was ridiculous that the bouncers still have jobs and arent in jail since they are known for doing that, but yet they are still there. Either way, that was a pretty bad way to end the night, but everyone was okay and the girls didn’t have any cuts or anything so that was good.
The last day, we woke up and went to the bus station to get a bus since we heard it would be a faster way to get to Cadiz. We had to say bye to Luca which sucked but it was still good seeing him for a few days….he said that after we left, he would stay in Granada for a few days before continuing his travels around Spain. The bus wasn’t much faster, it was still a 5 hour bus trip (train would have been a little longer because we would have had to switch trains in Sevilla), but luckily I was tired so I just rested the whole time. We got Cadiz around 4 or so, where we quickly went back on the boat to drop off our stuff and then we left to check out Cadiz a little bit. I didn‘t really see much of Cadiz, but I saw the big Cathedral in Cadiz, which of course looked very impressive from the outside because it seems to be a characteristic of the Spanish city to have an impressive cathedral in the city center, but besides that, we just ate and chilled before getting back on the boat to go to the States.
Overall, I loved Spain and SAS in general. SAS was really great, I saw so many awesome places and had a great time doing it. I met some really cool people and I would definitely recommend SAS to anyone. Of course, it wasn’t perfect (the administration was terrible, the executive dean of the voyage was very belittling and a lot of the people that ran student life were rude, disrespectful, and unfriendly) and I think the program is a little too strict about certain things (like if you get caught going on the ship drunk in port, you are supposed to get 24 hours of dock time which I think is a ridiculous punishment, its way too strict and apparently they used to be much more lenient about this when the program was under Pitt, but this was only enforced the final day in port, no one I know ever got in trouble for going on the ship drunk on the other days in port), but I still think the program is great because it takes you to so many great countries and you get academic credit for it. It’s really hard to get any work done on the trip, but I was still able to manage to get it done while at sea and in the end, SAS was definitely worth it and if I had to do it all again, I definitely would. SAS is great, and even though it sounds like Pitt did a better job managing the program than UVA does (I talked to someone on the trip who did it before with Pitt, and he said the administration was much better when he did it with them and everyone loved them, now under UVA the whole entire boat hated the administration), I would still recommend the program under the current state. It’s awesome, and we had a really great itinerary which made the trip so good.
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